About This Class

In part 1 of this 3 part series, I'll show you how to design and rig a character for animation in After Effects! Rigging is the setup process of your artwork that streamlines the animating workflow. You'll learn everything you need to get up and running with character animation.

The great thing about this technique is that it isn't limited to any design style. You could create a flat vector character in Illustrator, or a hand illustrated and textured character in Photoshop. If you can design it, I'll show you how to animate it.

Hey! My name is Jake Bartlett, and I’m a motion designer working and playing in sunny Los Angeles, California. I've been animating in Adobe After Effects for over ten years. After five years of working for an LA-based production company, I have gone freelance full-time and now work from home. Animating as a motion designer professionally is a dream for me. I get to use After Effects every single day for my job.

Since starting my professional career I've animated over 800 episodes of 8 different motion graphics shows for clients like Yahoo!, MSN, Twitter, YouTube, Pepsi, VH1, HGTV, NateGeo Wild, The History Channel, and Ulive to name a few. In my free time I love making animations for myself. I've found that constantly challenging myself on my own time has been the best way to increase the quality of my work. Being able to consistently use After Effects on a daily basis and always having a tight deadline has made me very fast and efficient with the program.